Guild of Writers

CG textures

95% of the textures used in my Ages come from it.

From my GoW dev journal:

• http://www.guildofwriters.org/tweek/met ... ollection/
  http://www.guildofwriters.org/tweek/17- ... -textures/
  http://www.guildofwriters.org/tweek/10-texture-sites/
  http://www.guildofwriters.org/tweek/200-wood-textures/

I have a few dozen pictures of stones, ground cover, etc, from my travels. I've posted some samples here in the past years as I only shot textures interesting for Uru.

I would like to upload them to some public depository, but I'm not willing to spend hours uploading them one by one, entering descriptions, etc. I need to be able to batch upload them.

Any suggestions of a suitable place?

You could pack them as a ZIP or RAR file, all in one, make an image with thumbnails which gives an impression about the content, post that image here
(like I did in this post: http://forum.guildofwriters.org/viewtop ... f=5&t=5451 )

and upload your ZIP to any webspace using FTP for example, where people can download it from.
If you don't find matching webspace (neither cheap nor for free), or don't find any which isn't flooded with advertising, give me a hint. There's still some disk space on texturu available.

I still know you requested a batch upload for texturu, and it would save you hours for upload, I'm sure. But in contrary, implementing this would cost me days, maybe weeks, and because texturu is not that frequently used as I expected when I started it, it seems I'm not going to do that work. I fear that feature would be used only one time.
As said, give me a hint if you're interested, and I'm sure we will find a way to get your ZIP uploaded.

Thanks Tach.
Yes, I remember and I understood very well at the time, it is a lot of work.
I never understood why Texturu was not used more, it is very well done.

Open Source Game Art

Site includes textures, models, concept art, music and tutorials for OS game makers. It even has a tutorial entitled "Attracting and keeping artists on an OSS game project". A snippet from that tutorial:

You may have very strong opinions about the visual look of your game. If you're not doing any of the work on the art, though, you need to shelve these opinions. Your artists will usually only enjoy their own style of art, and they're not being paid to make stuff for your game, they're only doing it because they enjoy it. Either you do it their way, or you don't get art. This is categorically different from commercial games. You're not their boss, you don't get to tell them what to do.

Geez, I thought it was just me! Turns out I'm normal after all .

I've been studying copyright laws lately with the intent of eventually sharing what I've learned. I didn't feel ready to draft a post yet because there are still a few areas that I'm not clear on. In light of the recent events posted at mystonline, I've decided to jump the gun a bit and share some facts about US Copyright law.

The first fact: EVERYTHING on the interwebz is copyrighted by someone. From the FAQ page of the US Copyright Office:

US Copyright Office wrote:When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

Link to site: US Copyright FAQ

What differentiates "free to use" from copyright protected is the orginal author giving permission to use the work. If there is a permission, it will be stated somewhere on the site the image is located on along with whatever stipulations the author may add to the permission. For instance, the admins at cgtextures dot com DO NOT PERMIT THEIR IMAGES TO BE USED IN WORKS LICENSED UNDER THE GPL OS license:

CGTextures FAQ Page wrote:May I use these textures in my Open Source (Creative Commons, GPL, etc) project?
No. These textures may not be used in Open-Source projects. The licenses are not compatible. Almost all Open-Source licenses allow redistribution of the materials, and redistribution is not allowed for these textures.

I don't know who or how the "powers-that-be" intend to review ages for copyright infringement; I just wanted to give age builders a heads-up so that they don't inadvertently spend hours/weeks/months/YEARS building an age and then discover they can't legally share what they've worked so long and hard to create.

There are numerous sites hosting images/textures/soundfx/music that we can legally and freely use in our work, but we need to look for and read the licenses and terms before assuming all is well.

Is this aimed at me or am I being paranoid ?
(this is not a rhetorical question. I'm not angry at you either, Calena, but I want to be sure)


Let's say I mean to use CGTextures' textures in my Age, without modifying them.
Let's say I want to release the exported version of this Age, but WITHOUT releasing any of the 3D models (which are entirely mine) or textures (which are not mine).
(let's also forget about sounds or scripts)
The Age is free to download, and the textures with it (they are stored "out of reach" in the game files [even though reverse-engineering is relatively easy]).

If I understood correctly, my Age ISN'T an open source project, and it's not a profit-oriented project either. I'm not releasing textures in a scrap book either.
So theoretically, it would be fine, right ?



This kind of license and property restriction always bugged me, especially in Uru's case. If I were to release such an Age, I know I would triple-triple-triple check these anyway. Or even ask people around here. Or both.

But since I never had to, I just assumed I could do anything with it as long as it stayed on my computer



BTW, without being sure, I *think* I saw some textures from CGTextures in some fan-Ages already. I'm not pointing anyone (and I won't). Even though it's impossible to trace all textures from all fan-Age on UAM or DI or whatever, what if someone released copyrighted material ?